


Disengaged

by Anonymous



Category: Original Work
Genre: personal, possible depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23731681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Something I wrote a couple years back. Its pretty personal, but maybe if you need it, it might resonate.
Kudos: 1
Collections: Anonymous





	Disengaged

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if these old thoughts can help me anymore, but maybe they can help someone else feel less alone. 
> 
> Hang in there

Or maybe annon . I don't know if I'll send this. I thought hard about calling therapy today. I was sitting in class, and I wondered “why am I so disconnected.” I looked up disconnected , and feel, yes I do fit these symptoms. I'm not engaging, even though I try to be the kind of person, and have been in the past, someone who passionately cares about rights. I was very much a theoretical environmentalist when I was younger, and still care, just not passionately. I call myself a theoretical environmentalist, because I'm not very good at putting it into practice. I like hot showers, mango, lack much of a green thumb, and believe the world would be a lot better if we could cut down on things like cars and urban development over fertile lands. I'm also a spoiled brat who appreciates being driven, enjoys the her electronics, and her comforts. So while it's upsetting that there comforts come from the exploitation of third world countries, there's not really much I feel I can individually do with it, which has slipped to an apathy just as bad as those who don't care to know, and feel like “I'm just going to sit here and think about how utterly fucked we are, and watch the world go down in flames”

Other projects could distract me. Drama, or art or gym. I used to love gym. I should get back into gym. I felt better when I was fit. I got really passionately into my projects, once. Fanfiction, painting, writing. Paper route.

I've had periods where I'm full of passion, and periods where I'm behind a glass. Its there, I show up, I do the work, but I don't feel it. It starts and ends in the same place, and I wouldn't call it hell, I would call it the blur that is life. Life should be more then a bus shelter.

If I had three wishes, I would wish for money, passion, and drive. I don't lack for creativity, when I can put my mind to it, but the other two are needed to spark it. Passion to spark it, drive to see it through, and money to enable it. 

I dislike taking the bus. Some days I express extreme annoyance towards it, and others I just sit on it. 

I'm tired, and there's no reason for it. There's no reason for any of this. I'm not traumatized, or in a bad relationship, or any of the reasons they said it might happen. Im working on getting a job. I don't have passionate feelings to it, even though it is in the art industry, involves research, it should be something to get excited about. But I'm not. I don't want a job. I can't explain it. I don't want a job. I don't know why. Do I not want to grow up? Do I just not care? Yes, but I should have one. I need money for supplies and to live, and pay for games, and electricity and internet, and I should start that sooner. Some days I feel school kills your soul and traps you into a monotone cycle to grow up. I've also had a lot of good things happen through school. Met people, passionately worked on things. 

So why don't I seek passion? Its one thing to know what you should do, another thing to work up the shits to care. Its so easy not to do anything, to let it pass. Some days I want to scream. But where do you scream safely? Where do you practice screaming just to feel something? I remember Drama class, having trouble screaming for a part. 

I remember being a kid. I remember, running around at recess, and pretending I was playing tag with friends. I didn't know how to friend. Well, I did, and I had them, but recess, was different, I guess. I drew with chalk. The friends I had were close, I thought, but I only made one lifelong one. Even then, there are times of distance. 

The haze of life was an on off thing. Remember when I failed. That was in a deep one. I didn't care, and I felt stressed, but also like I should be able to handle it. I didn't. That broke it with panic And shame, and sadness, and shock. And that served as a wakeup call, and I didn't slip into complacency, and was pretty active and alert. Semester three was great, semester four worked, and the others went fine, if not as engaged, but still engaged. 

But I don't feel it here. I thought this different class would help, I thought that the new year could help. I thought I could engage. 

In not. Or not as well and often as I should be. 

I want to cry and have someone beside me who gets it, and I also wish I could feel not ashamed of crying in front of them. Its hard to let myself. I want to feel angry or motivated, or not feel awkward speaking about these things. Out loud. I feel as though I shouldn't say these things to people. That I'm supposed to be fine. 

And maybe I am Fine. Fine in the sense of being a blank page, or perhaps something that was erased, and you can still see the markings that the pencil left. 

I've been feeling this for large periods of my life, and then it would go away and come back. Its not suicide. Is it depression? I've written it off as Aspburgers or ADD, or introversion, or something. I didn't really question it, I tried to find something new. Something distracting to engage in. Games, books, tv. I can force myself to work on a project when urgency comes up, and Hyperfoccus kicks in. Beyond that, it's like its there, -like the tree on the front lawn you don't pay much attention to beyond raking up leaves until an ice storm breaks it onto your car. Then you get a chainsaw, and get it off, the sooner the better. But until it fell on your car, it was just part of the environment, and not urgent.

But even things that feel like they should have more urgency to them, are not feeling like that at this time. 

And today, why am I disengaged. “Why am I disengaged” was running through my head, and for a long moment, I wanted to talk. I wanted to go ask for therapy, from a stranger as I did once. I thought of Anonymous therapy. I looked it up, and I almost went called. But I didn't. The words are in my throat, but I can't speak them out loud, and it aches. I should have been paying attention to the lesson, to the movies,but the question parched. 

I want to put this out there. I want to say I should base a project off of this. How do you express disengagement? Visually, audio, musical, texture. Normally you don't want the audience to disengage, to induce apathy. That is not an emotion you hope to evoke. 

Once I tried using black& white photographs, with isolation and upset yet apathetic body posture. I think I called it boredom or ennui . I don't feel it was enough. It didn't express enough what I felt. 

“Stay determined”, I sometimes tell myself, “fake it until you make it”. But when it feels like life is a boring reoccurring dream, where do you get that spark, that passion, to change things in it, when you are not driven enough to change it.

How do you break the glass?


End file.
